Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Evie, Now
The Caldwell family home stood at the edge of Burdock Creek.
Honeysuckle wove around the handrails, up the thin columns, and all along the porch.
Red-orange blossoms flowered on the vine, the wind whipping them this way and that.
Storm clouds muted the soft yellow clapboard, a match for the maple leaves that littered the grass.
In the far corner of the house, a turret rose up from the third story.
Evie Caldwell stood just inside one of the turret’s black-framed windows, a candle on the antique bureau in front of her. Her wavy blonde hair hung loose about her shoulders, and her hazel eyes looked almost brown in the shadows cast by the oncoming storm.
She stared out at the grounds of Honeysuckle House.
Wildflowers grew rampant along the creek bank, glistening with the first drops of rain.
Her daughter Clara stomped her way through the grass in bright yellow rain boots, a spot of light in the fall gloom.
Before Clara was born seven years ago, Honeysuckle House and the candles Evie dipped for the town had been her whole world.
She’d been so desperate to prove to herself and her sister that she was right about how to end the curse that Evie hadn’t let herself think of anything else.
She still remembered the diary the house had presented her with after her mother’s death. The words inside that led her to this life.
She’d found it face down on her mother’s bed, open midway through.
She’d flipped it over to find her mother’s handwriting scrawled across the paper.
It had been so long since she’d read anything the woman had written.
She’d trailed her finger over the words, which had taken her back to her childhood.
To the years after her father’s death when Linda left notes each morning because she dipped and burned candles late into the night and couldn’t be bothered to rise with her daughters and get them ready for school.
Things like:
There’s eggs in the fridge. Don’t use them all.
The dishes in the sink won’t do themselves.
Evie, stop leaving your bike out on the front lawn or I’ll take it away.
She’d held her place with a finger and flipped to the front of the journal. The inside of the cover read, Property of Linda Caldwell. 1986. It was the year Evie’s grandmother had died; the year Florence was born.
The window had opened, and a soft breeze blew through the room, flipping the pages back to the way Evie had found them. From what she could tell, they were notes her mother had written to try to understand the curse. In the center of the page, someone had circled a few paragraphs.
Can magic be good or bad?
I’ve never used my magic to hurt anyone.
Yes, it made it easier to fall in love, to ease Robert’s anxiety over the curse, but that’s good magic, isn’t it?
And what of Mother? Her spells have helped us meet our needs.
The town fears us because of the curse, so we’ve gotten by as best we could, and we have the magic to thank for that.
But is magic that’s only meant for yourself—that doesn’t help other people—inherently bad?
All my life, Mother has kept that magic here, locked behind these walls, unable to escape. Perhaps that is what has caused this curse. Too much power hoarded in one place. If we were to use our magic for the good of the town, could that bring balance?
Those words, Evie believed, had been what the tarot cards pointed to when she and Florence had consulted them for answers, no matter what Florence had said.
The hierophant could represent tradition.
Reversed, it was a breaking of tradition.
By sharing their magic, that’s exactly what Evie would be doing.
She had lost the journal soon after, as if it had never been there at all, but the lesson had stayed with her. The only path to restoring the balance of the Caldwells’ power was to turn their backs on the way their mother and their grandmother had hidden it away.
Evie had done exactly that, sharing her magic with the town.
Every month Angela joined Evie in delivering her candles to the various businesses along Main Street (much to Florence’s disappointment), and, slowly, their dying town came back to life.
Even business at the bookstore boomed despite Florence’s refusal to burn Evie’s candles.
Over time, Evie had grown lonely. She’d invited a handful of guests into her bed, hoping for someone who might want to stay, but nothing ever came of it. Until her daughter, Clara.
Evie gripped the curtain gently and smiled. The fabric brushed against her hand, then her cheek, a reminder of all the love she’d fostered behind these walls.
She turned back to the bureau she’d set up in the attic above her room, once a place her mother wouldn’t allow her, now claimed for her own spellwork.
Yes, her mother may have died in the room, but it had the best view in the house, and Evie was done with letting her mother have a hold on her.
Before her lay a deck of tarot cards and a black taper candle.
For a Caldwell witch, the power of their magic was twofold—the creation of the candle with the intentions they poured into each dipping of string in wax, then the release of those intentions once they set the wick to flame.
This one she’d infused with love and protection, dusted it with basil and rosemary between the layers, and the all-too-familiar words: May my magic be good, my loved ones be safe, and my work be a blessing.
She pushed the sleeves of her burnt-orange sweater up to her elbows as she whispered the words again, then poured a circle of salt around the candlestick holder.
Then she struck a match and lit the wick.
For the third and final time she said, “May my magic be good, my loved ones be safe, and my work be a blessing.”
She lifted a slip of paper on which she’d written the names of four people—Evie, Clara, Florence, and Angela—and held it to the fire.
As the flame burned through the names, a scream echoed through the house.
Evie stilled, the paper turning to ash and the fire licking against her fingers.
She pulled them back before they could burn.
Then, she ran for the sound.
Down the spiral steps to her bedroom, across the hall of the third floor to the main staircase, to the landing on the second floor where the guest rooms were.
“Where did it come from?” she asked.
The floorboards shifted beneath her feet, pushing her to the right.
She hurried down the hall, past cobwebs that hung in corners and photos of the Caldwell witches who’d come before her—both a reminder of who she didn’t want to become and a part of the story she sold her guests of a haunted house in a small Tennessee town—until a sconce flickered beside one of the rooms.
Evie stopped abruptly in front of it and rapped on the door.
The sound of shuffling feet came from the other side.
When no one answered, she pulled her keys from her pocket and started through the ring looking for the right one.
Before she found it, the door creaked open on its own.
Evie dropped the keys as she reached for the handle.
“Hello?” she asked.
The door opened further, and Evie found a woman with light brown skin, dark brown hair, and a bright red lip standing on the other side. Evie racked her brain for her name.
“Harper,” she said as it came to her. “I heard a scream. Are you alright?”
“Just a little scare,” Harper said.
Her wife—Quinn, Evie remembered—sat on a small couch eyeing the four-poster bed warily. Her curly red hair was disheveled, and she held a fair, freckled hand over her pregnant belly.
“The mattress threw me out of the bed,” Quinn said.
“Threw is a bit of an exaggeration,” Harper said.
Evie’s brow furrowed. The house played tricks on the guests as much as it did on Evie and Clara. Turning doorknobs, fluttering curtains, flickering lights. But it wasn’t supposed to touch them.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” Evie asked. “Do you need me to call someone?”
Quinn waved a hand. “I’m fine. It surprised me is all.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Evie said. “This visit is on me.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Harper said. “We knew the house was haunted, but none of the reviews mentioned falling out of bed. We might’ve waited to come another time.”
“I insist,” Evie said.
The two women shared a glance. When the pregnant one nodded, the other one said, “That’s very generous of you. We’ve had so much fun. We’ll definitely be back.”
“If you need a little extra time before you check out, please let me know,” Evie said.
“We were just heading down for breakfast, then plan to hit the road,” Harper said.
“And you’re sure you’re alright?” Evie asked Quinn.
The younger woman nodded. “Sorry to make such a fuss.”
“Not at all.” Evie backed out of the room. “Come find me when you’re ready to leave, and I’ll give you a hand with your bags.”
Once Harper closed the door, Evie tapped her fingers against the wall, a twisting feeling in her stomach. October thirteenth was right around the corner. She’d been so certain her use of magic would be enough to break her family’s curse, but if a guest had been pushed out of bed …
She shook her head. This had nothing to do with the curse. It couldn’t.
“No touching the guests,” she whispered.
But if the house heard her, it didn’t respond.